Page 137 of Dose

“I know.”

The connection ends.

Isla finds me awake at six.

Her eyes open, locate me in the chair beside the bed and sharpen immediately.

“He called.”

“Baltimore relay is down. Two Wager handlers left. He found the file of a woman who escaped in 2019.”

“Alive?”

“The file remained active. He doesn’t know more yet.”

She sits up and pulls the blanket around her shoulders. “He thinks she’s like him.”

“He thinks some of the markers overlap.”

“Same sentence in Ezra.”

I cannot disagree.

“He sounds further away every time,” I say.

Isla reaches for my hand. She no longer has to think before touching me in the dark.

“We can’t force him home.”

“That does not make what he’s doing safe.”

“No. It means Dominic keeps looking, Raphael keeps asking the questions Ezra hates, and we don’t pretend a check-in is the same as being all right.” Her thumb moves once across my knuckles. “It also means the door stays open.”

“He knows.”

“Good.”

She pulls me back into bed. I go because there is nothing useful I can do at six in the morning that cannot be done with her warm against me.

The recovery liaison forwards Mia’s message at eleven.

Mia is the name she chose after Phoenix. She was ten when we carried the medication records out and eleven by the time her new school enrolled her. Contact remains protected through the clinic; neither her current surname nor her address appears on Isla’s screen.

Isla sees the subject line and stops with a pipette halfway to the rack.

“Put that down first,” I say.

She returns it to the stand without looking away from the tablet.

The note is short.

Miss Isla,

Dr. Halloran said I could write if I wanted. My blood tests were in the target range again. I started school and made a friend named Priya. She likes horses too. I asked what my medicine was for, like you told me I could, and Dr. Halloran explained every part before she touched me. I was still scared, but I did it anyway.

Thank you for helping us leave.

Mia